This chapter explains the rationale for considering shallowly buried (0 to>5 m depth) water ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars as a resource to support futurehuman missions, and describes a NASA-funded effort to map that ice with existingorbital remote-sensing data. In recent decades, numerous studies have used variousdatasets to investigate the presence and stability of water ice in the Martian shallow subsurface, with the aim of understanding the planet’s recent climate history. As partof a renewed effort to prepare for human Mars missions, NASA has undertaken amore resource-focused approach. Here we describe the Mars Subsurface Water IceMapping (SWIM) team’s efforts to characterize the distribution of buried water-iceresources across all longitudes from 60°S to 60°N latitude through the integrationof multiple datasets. Deriving composite measures for the presence of accessible icefrom a diverse range of remote sensing techniques with unique resolutions and caveatsis a challenging problem. To enable data synthesis, the team developed a methodologythat assigns values of ice consistency for mapped detections of hydrogen from a neutron spectrometer, thermal behavior from various thermal spectrometers, multiscalegeomorphology from imagery and elevation data, and surface and subsurfaceechoes from a radar sounder. Faced with diverse sensing depths and footprints forthese datasets, the team has been pursuing an optimal approach to best representmulti-dataset ice consistency. The current formulation includes the use of weightingfactors tuned to depth zones of interest for resource extraction. In the absence of dedicatedground-truth data, the validity of the team’s efforts is assessed by comparingthe maps to the locations of fresh, ice-exposing impacts. The highest ice-consistencyvalues occur within discrete zones poleward of ~40° latitude, where ice is relativelyshallow, but positive values extend well into the ~20°–30° latitude zone, which ispreferable for landing sites due to engineering considerations.
Ice resource mapping on Mars
M. Mastrogiuseppe;
2023-01-01
Abstract
This chapter explains the rationale for considering shallowly buried (0 to>5 m depth) water ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars as a resource to support futurehuman missions, and describes a NASA-funded effort to map that ice with existingorbital remote-sensing data. In recent decades, numerous studies have used variousdatasets to investigate the presence and stability of water ice in the Martian shallow subsurface, with the aim of understanding the planet’s recent climate history. As partof a renewed effort to prepare for human Mars missions, NASA has undertaken amore resource-focused approach. Here we describe the Mars Subsurface Water IceMapping (SWIM) team’s efforts to characterize the distribution of buried water-iceresources across all longitudes from 60°S to 60°N latitude through the integrationof multiple datasets. Deriving composite measures for the presence of accessible icefrom a diverse range of remote sensing techniques with unique resolutions and caveatsis a challenging problem. To enable data synthesis, the team developed a methodologythat assigns values of ice consistency for mapped detections of hydrogen from a neutron spectrometer, thermal behavior from various thermal spectrometers, multiscalegeomorphology from imagery and elevation data, and surface and subsurfaceechoes from a radar sounder. Faced with diverse sensing depths and footprints forthese datasets, the team has been pursuing an optimal approach to best representmulti-dataset ice consistency. The current formulation includes the use of weightingfactors tuned to depth zones of interest for resource extraction. In the absence of dedicatedground-truth data, the validity of the team’s efforts is assessed by comparingthe maps to the locations of fresh, ice-exposing impacts. The highest ice-consistencyvalues occur within discrete zones poleward of ~40° latitude, where ice is relativelyshallow, but positive values extend well into the ~20°–30° latitude zone, which ispreferable for landing sites due to engineering considerations.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
